WOK and its future ......

[TBert]

Last random post and then back to whatever this post was originally about.

I'm not even in Hawaii right now dude, I'm in Virginia, finishing up a month of partying in a small college town while I'm on a sort of business trip for the Army. But I go back to Hawaii next week.

[Hannibal]

1) You need a "HOW TO JOIN IN" button in the main menu. (In my pdf explaining the game [New Visitors Look Here], the instructions at the end on how to join, in are now wrong, since you improved the main menu and removed the "MY LOBBY" that I told them to look for high on the left of the home page ....). You need the simple "Join" button as well as something explaining the game such as my pdf.

Added. Though i plan to do a complete rehaul of the first page to give new visitors a chance to see what WOK's about in just one view.

Well done, Saladin, for taking on the saviour task and making things happen .... and for being open-minded about who the ideas come from!
Hey, I might even get to play Standard WOK again! (Advanced WOK always looked too much like "Have fun with accountancy" for me!)

Seems to me we need to get Site, Retention and Etiquette sorted before the major push on recruitment that I have ideas for, otherwise we'd just recruit visitors only to lose 99% of them again ....

CONSTRUCTIVE COMMENT: (definitely not a ctriticism): Well done for creating a "Join in" button on the main menu .... but (temporarily?) when you press it, you are just sent to my long .pdf .... which, under the final paragraph, How To Join In, says: "By the time you read this, in the future, there may be a dedicated 'How To Join In' tab, so just go back to the Homepage and go there" Hmmm, a bit circular ....My pdf goes on to say "Meanwhile .....", but is now outdated by your update, as it says to first look for "My Lobby" over top left on the Homepage .....ie wrong now! (You probably didn't bother to read it ... no problem ... it was intended for raw visitors, not for veterans to read.)

I don't know how much effort or skill I'm asking here, but: seems to me the easiet might be to make that "Join in" button go to a new page/window that simply said:
"Just e-mail veteran player Duke at ..... and he'll get you into a clan and into a game!"

At the same time, to avoid confusion, you should retitle the buttons to my .pdf as "Explanation of Standard WOK", to avoid confusion over which is the way to get started quick.

Sorry, folks, I don't have time to go back and shorten the above. Just trying to help.

[Hannibal]

and if you've got something interesting for the front page post it and i'll put it up!

Well, you know me!! Immediately about 10 WOK-related articles spring to mind. But maybe for later when there are more than 8 people looking in on the site.

For example, first thought, I could do an article on "What a nap means". You see, some people clearly come to us from games where deals are EXPECTED to be reneged on from time to time (eg Diplomacy, which has far more online players than WOK does). Remember the newbie who spied on AF, just to CHECK that AF was sticking to the NAP? And got slated for it and went away? And the guy (Griffin??) who broke a nap but didn't see what the big deal was about doing so? And went away? And the guy who thought a NAP automatically meant no letting another player through -- so he bombed me mid-nap? And went awa..., no, he's still here!

I'd write one, such that we all SHARED the same view, that newbies could read, or we could all debate...Or maybe not.

Because, as someone once said: every action has an equal and opposite criticism!

[Raw]

And the guy who thought a NAP automatically meant no letting another player through -- so he bombed me mid-nap? And went awa..., no, he's still here!

That's funny.........and you're gay.

[Duke]

Well he isnt the one with the cute bunny as an avatar.

Again I like what I see Hannibal except maybe for the harsh view on NAP's. They are suppoused to be more of a "in character" kind of rule. As much as we "in character" expect everyone to obey the we (at least I) wager the persons reliability for actually sticking to the NAP and plan accordingly.

I cant see how you could describe that in any good way in an article without it being sort of well if you sit here, then I'll come through the door and then you are suppoused to be angry at me if I dont leave and... I hear that stuff from my 4 year old daughter all day long. I kind of like the idea of it being a surprize. Heck! Did they get that pissed? Maybe I'll think twice about breaking that thing again.

I would be more then happy about being a newbie greeter. (See where this is heading. Me and H appointing eachother to different positions and the being accused by Raw of being in love and toy and whatnot)

Cant think of anything more to write. Raw is a toy btw, did I already say that? Nevermind Could we do something to the censor in the posts?

[Raw]

Well he isnt the one with the cute bunny as an avatar.

Again I like what I see Hannibal except maybe for the harsh view on NAP's. They are suppoused to be more of a "in character" kind of rule. As much as we "in character" expect everyone to obey the we (at least I) wager the persons reliability for actually sticking to the NAP and plan accordingly.

I cant see how you could describe that in any good way in an article without it being sort of well if you sit here, then I'll come through the door and then you are suppoused to be angry at me if I dont leave and... I hear that stuff from my 4 year old daughter all day long. I kind of like the idea of it being a surprize. Heck! Did they get that pissed? Maybe I'll think twice about breaking that thing again.

I would be more then happy about being a newbie greeter. (See where this is heading. Me and H appointing eachother to different positions and the being accused by Raw of being in love and toy and whatnot)

Cant think of anything more to write. Raw is a toy btw, did I already say that? Nevermind Could we do something to the censor in the posts?

LOL...there you go again, kissing Han on the neck.

I'd stick around for this, but I am not into the male gay porn.

[Raw]

Oh...and BTW

The double ended toy is meant for 2 women, not 2 men.

[Duke]

lol

How do you argue with an insane person? Anyone here that could help me out?

[Raw]

lol

How do you argue with an insane person? Anyone here that could help me out?

LOL...I am insane!

[Hannibal]

Hello again - first return to the forums for 3 or 4 months, to see wha's happening. And after a year off, I'm actually playing in a game too.

I've resurrected this thread for my latest suggestion, so that I can still find the first 7 ideas I put forward back in August; I see that 2 of them got implemented; pretty good. And my friend Saladin did say:

Now Han, lets have the other suggestions, so we can implement them as well.

OK, maybe it's best if I make one suggestion at a time.

This one should be fairly uncontentious? I just looked through 3 months of posts, and saw a problem with an easy fix: Ada was understandably confused by the "List of games", as to whether he could join a game that was called Standard in the Version field, but Advanced in the Difficulty field .... Hmm. I'm glad we switched from WoK 4 and WoK 5 to Standard and Advanced WoK, but we now have the oddity of games flagged as "Standard yet Advanced" .....! (Version and Difficulty).

It must require little coding to change the terminology? To make it easy on new folk? To get them into games more easily?

That box appears to be titled: "Search for games using:". First, we should retitle it: "Games in progress and about to start". THAT tells newbies what the list is?

The WOK Version field is fine (Standard or Advanced).

The Difficulty field maybe should be changed from Advanced and Beginner, to "Average", "Beginner" and "Champion". So that newbies don't think they are banned from an "Advanced" game, now renamed "Average"; and "Champion" can be reserved for champs games, or invitation games ....

The Game Type field currently offers "Common" or "X-Game". This is surely unclear unless you've been here a while. "X-Game" is surely not self-explanatory to the poor newbie. And "Common" is not exactly clear. Let's change them to "Normal" (how reassuring that it's OK to join it); and "Special" (so much clearer than "X-Game"). In my mind, you can still have House Rules in a "Normal" game, changing the parameters, but if you do something very different, like the wheel or missilemania, you'd choose "Special" for it.

The "Free Slots" field is not used? It's there as a field but there's no pull-down menu? I imagine that's because somebody thought it would involve the hassle of updating how many slots were still available .....or trying to code that. Easy: Make the pull-down Field options simply "Yes" and "No" !! ie, Yes if it's still in sign-up phase, and No if it's full! Also Yes if the game's started but looking for a substitute player?

The Game Status field has the "Running", "Open" etc that we veterans are used to. But what does "Open" mean to a newbie? Maybe it means not restricted to certain classes of players? Unclear? Hey, let's replace "Open" with "Sign Up" ? Much clearer and much more encouraging?

OK, there can't be much to disagree with there - once you look at it from a new arrival's POV. Korexus once posted (signed) that he'd make a change if 3 people said yes. So, anyone say yes?

Just tryin' to help capture and retain new players .....

Han

[korexus]

Nice thoughts Han,

Changing the terminology is certainly simple to do from a coding point of view although it takes an irritating amount of time to check that every refference has been changed.

I might suggest something along the lines of 'beginner', 'all' and 'invitation' would be most clear, but words were never my strong point...

Free slots is not used because it miss-reports Advanced WoK game. As soon as I work out a way of fixing that which doesn't require re-writing all of Rune's lovely programming, I will.

"Free Slots" might be a better phrase to use than "Sign Up" or "Open". Come to think about it, that would also remove the need for a free slots column and might make lif emuch easier for me.


Anyone else with thoughts?


Chris,

[Hannibal]

I might suggest something along the lines of 'beginner', 'all' and 'invitation' would be most clear, but words were never my strong point...

Sounds good to me. But in that case, change the title of the field from "Difficulty" to "Player level"? ("Difficulty=all" could be strange!)

So that we get:

Player level
Beginner
All
Invitation

rather than

Difficulty
Beginner
All
Invitation

...... which also avoids the risk that some new arrivals might take "Difficulty" levels to mean that additional and more complex rules come into play ...

"Free Slots" might be a better phrase to use than "Sign Up" or "Open". Come to think about it, that would also remove the need for a free slots column and might make lif emuch easier for me.

Neat idea, especially if it makes your life that bit easier. Cancel the "Free slots" field and column, and make the Game status column:

Game Status (not just "status" which could be ambiguous):

Game status
Free slots
Running
Paused
Finished

Remember to change the title of the whole panel to "Games In Progress And About To Start", so that it says what the panel and list are! For my money, you could simply delete the current "title" of "Search for games using", as we're some months from needing to offer people ways of filtering the list of 5 or 6 games!

Oh, and I'll sneak in one new suggestion: why not swap over the location of THIS panel and the one above it - "Gamemaster's menu". That way, this panel is just visible on the screen as it comes up, without scrolling down (it's not to save us habitues from the effort of scrolling down; it's so that new folk can see that they have indeed FOUND the list of games, rather than search all the screen and finally hit on the idea of scrolling down to see if they find it that way ....).

Cheers,
Han

[Aussie Gaz]

Korexus

I agree with Han's suggestions about the game lists etc.

Gaz

[korexus]

One more agreement and I'll do it.

I'm not sure about the GM's thing. I'll probably do it, but this won't confuse new players as new players can't be GMs and so won't see that box anyway. Yes, the Lobby is (when it works) very clever.


Chris.

[Hannibal]

Korexus

I agree with Han's suggestions about the game lists etc.

Gaz

Thanks , Gaz. Appreciated.

So, Kor, you still need one more "other people" to say yes, huh? Hmm. Could be tricky as we may be the only 3 people reading this thread ......!

How about if you bend your rules whenever it's bleedin' obvious?!

Han

[Mullog]

I am still here! Although I am quite busy moving to our new home...

Han's suggestions are great, so start working Chris!

[Hannibal]

I'm not sure about the GM's thing. I'll probably do it, but this won't confuse new players as new players can't be GMs and so won't see that box anyway.


Chris.

Just step-checking that you didn't misconstrue the point, Kor (surely not):

It doesn't matter whether new players SEE that GM panel; it only matters that they see this "games in progress" panel that they're looking for on the page they click to, without having to check 6-8 panels as "not it" and then think of scrolling down to search further! So, if you're saying that for non-GM's the vital panel of games in progress/sign-up moves up to replace the GM panel, and is therefore visible without scrolling down, then OK. But if you mean they'll just see a blank there and still have to search, not give up, and scroll down, then I think it's well worth it to make sure the key panel is visible on first click, without having to think of scrolling down. (I can't check this myself ... no idea how to log on as just a guest to see what happens then).

I have no idea how easy/difficult the switch of location is, but prob easy?

Cheers,
Han

[Hannibal]

Hi Kor, Gaz and Mull,

Maybe you (and the occasional guest or player-as-guest) are wondering why on earth I'm frittering away my and your time on wording and navigation details, when the big issue is very clearly recruitment and retention of players. It's because of my firm belief that it's not worth even bothering to attract potential players to visit the site until we've made the site better and removed the obstacles that will put them off, and optimised the pluses that will get them to join in and then stay.

We gotta get the site and community right before the push on recruitment. Otherwise, every potential we attract will visit, look, and go away again. That would not be so bad if there were an infinite pool of possible players, but my suspicion is that most appropriate people will give us ONE look and then go away again (so let's get it right before we get them to visit?). So the first step is to get the site right for new-lookers, and THEN go for a recruitment -drive. Not the other way around.

Don't worry, only 10 more site-improvements before I get on to 8 ideas for recruitment and retention!

For example, I could now more than quadruple the player-base if I wanted to try that now. But, until we get the site right, I don't want to do it yet.

This is no criticism of the brilliance of making Standard Wok an automated on-line easy-play .... it's the peripheral site stuff that fell between the cracks.

Quadruple the active p;ayer-base? OK:

1) I'm the founder and host (I host it at my home) of the London Board Games Club, going since 2002. 34 members and 14 ex-members (moved away etc.). These are seasoned, enthusiastic, adult, players of strategic-type boardgames. I could easily press 10, probably 20 of them, to at least give WOK a try, probably with me GM'ing (less chance of them risking my wrath by going AWOL !!). And they're the type of players who would be more likely to "stick" - because the game itself IS good!

2) In my year off from Kaomaris, I played other stuff a bit, similarly emaill-with-a-website. I got on well with many, who became friends. I certainly haven't mentioned WOK to them. But I'm sure I could easily get 10 of them to try out Standard Wok, probably me GM'ing, so that they interact with each other, and are less likely to let ME down as GM, so they'd experience a whole game against each other before deciding whether to continue with WOK or not. The more they try a full game (instead of M-3 after 3 or 5 turns), the more they are likely to stay?

3) My kids and their schoolmates. Lots of them. When I started playing WOK, my two eldest boys followed my every turn and and every turn report. They loved it, but were too young then in my opinion. Their classmates/ sleepovers followed it, too. I said they were slightly too young just then. By now, they and their classmates are very good at boardgames, and ripe for standard WOK, no problem. I could easily get 10 of them to fight each other for places to actually play WOK Standard .... (Unfortunately, just at the critical time, Raw did his maniac things, including a change to his sig to include in his sig "Rock out with your cock out" [Why? Funny?], so I immediately blocked my kids and their friends from the Kaomaris site and pointed them elsewhere .... But if we are rid of Raw, I might risk getting my two and 58 classmates involved ..........).

4) and 5) I have two good ideas for recruitment of strangers. But not till I think we've made the site right for their first impressions to be good ones, so that we don't lose them two minutes after they visit .... More on that later.

So, I could easily quadruple or more the player base .... but only when I'm happy to direct them to check trhe site out. Hence getting it right first, in my priorities.

Or else we just give up? Hey, I gave it up myself till Mull dragged me back .... so this is a spurt of energy ..... which prob won't last long. I fully realise that nothing will happen unless at least 4 of us are bothering to try (if Kor and Mull gave up, where would we be?). Duke has been silent, and Saladin invisible as new chairman (apolgies if serious RL issues I didn't know about ...).

Cheers,
Han

[korexus]

Han, just to clarify:

The Lobby wouldn't be deserving of the description "Very Clever" if it put up a whole load of empty boxes. If you want the technical stuff, each box is loaded or not according to a series of logic statements about who is looking and what they asked to see. (This is what all the junk in the address bar is about, I'll get rid of that one day, I promise!) So the GM Menu doesn't appear (and doesn't take up space) if you are not a GM. Regardless, I may move the boxes round as GMs may prefer the boxes switched anyway.

As for the rest of it, I'm about to start my second teaching placement so I'm not going to have a whole lot of spare time, but some of my Saturdays will be kinda free so keep putting up the ideas and I'll work on them as I get the chance.


Chris.

[Hannibal]

The Lobby wouldn't be deserving of the description "Very Clever" if it put up a whole load of empty boxes.

Sounds to me like this Lobby is one of those brilliant pieces of "architecture" that needs to work behind-the-scenes and not be a step that the users have to consciously pass through, as it used to be. So long as the effect is that you see the list you're LOOKING FOR when the screen comes up, without scrolling down, then great.

Regardless, I may move the boxes round as GMs may prefer the boxes switched anyway.

Yes please. Even we ex-GM's would prefer the main table of games to come up when we click, without scrolling down. When we occasionally GM, we'll scroll down then .....

Cheers,
Han